Change Your Brain Every Day - The Connection Between ADHD and the Foods You Eat, with Dr. Uma Naidoo

Episode Date: July 29, 2020

Food is medicine for your mind. What you put in your body BECOMES your body, so if you’re stuggling with brain health-related issues, the best place to start is on your plate. In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel and Tana Amen are once again joined by Harvard health blog writer Dr. Uma Naidoo for a discussion on which foods can help you increase your focus and attention. For more info on Dr. Naidoo’s new book “This is Your Brain on Food”, visit https://www.amazon.com/This-Your-Brain-Food-Indispensable/dp/0316536822

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com. Welcome back. We are here with Dr. Uma Naidoo, psychiatrist, nutritionist, chef, expert on food and mood and food and energy and food and focus, food and memory, food in your mind.

This is your brain on food. And why don't you read the website for that? August 4th, umanidomd.com. U-M-A-N-A-I-D-O-O-M-D.com. The book will be available everywhere. It's published by Little Brown. It publishes many of our friends, Mark Hyman and David Perlmutter.

We're just very excited to meet you and spend time with you. Thank you so much. And if you learn something during this podcast, post it on any of your social media. I mean, write it down, take a picture of it, post it. And then hashtag Brain Warriors Way podcast. We're now at eight and a half million downloads. We're so grateful to all of you that are listening. But we want you to get this book. We brain warriors. They're arm prepared and aware to win the fight of their lives

starts with food. It starts with what you put in your body. One thing I want to address with you too, at some point, maybe we can talk about tips because like you said, you addressed the fact that we are a culture that likes sweet foods. And we talked about the Mediterranean diet. And I remember I got so hooked on the dessert when we were on our Mediterranean cruises, when we were in Greece, they have Greek, cold Greek yogurt with a tiny bit of honey drizzled on it with walnuts. Everywhere you go, that's what they have for dessert. And it was so much simpler than like our ice cream and our, you know, all these things and little honey, but not much,

but it didn't have all the processed chemicals and all this stuff. And I got hooked on it. I was just like, that is such a good idea. And it's so delicious, you know, and, and you could, you could have it. I totally agree with that. I love that. And it's the creaminess of and and you could you could have it i totally agree with that i love that and it's the creaminess of the greek yogurt makes it even better um the drizzle of honey then you know you add on the crunchiness of the walnuts it's it's all it's all great great food right there you know it's your prebiotics it's you know um honey is sort of glucose it goes directly to your brain so that's a great great great food for you and in

moderation you know we're not saying have a jug of it um and and i i like that there's almost an emphasis on healthier options for desserts um and i think that where we sometimes get into trouble here is that um our desserts are and trust me i love to bake i'm you know i learned to bake before i learned how to cook. But part of my challenge is I try to figure out, is there a way that I can make this cupcake healthier? You know, I made a chocolate cupcake recently, with zucchini in it. Sounds like me. Yeah. You know, and with zucchini and other and alternate types of flour to see, can I,

you know, change it around, but have it still look like a cupcake, you know? So it's all those little things. And, and, you know, there's this cool stuff about chocolate where chocolate is, we know is a great brain food, but it's the super dark chocolate. And it's, it's really telling people the right kind of chocolate. Without all the sugar in it. Right. Without all the added sugar and fats in it. Right. And it also turns out that the process of making, roasting the cacao beans and the

process by which chocolate is made um the super dark form has fermentation involved so you know it's potentially also a good food for your gut so i i like to recommend super dark chocolate and try to give people guidelines about the types to get because it requires a little bit of a client case. They look simple. Oh, but they're delicious. I'm like golden milk. And I'm not a fan of dairy because most people are lactose intolerant. Let me finish. A cup of almond milk, a teaspoon of ground turmeric, a quarter teaspoon of black pepper, half teaspoon of honey, and a quarter teaspoon of grated nutmeg. That sounds amazing. And it sounds delicious and it's good for you. So you love it and it loves you back right we never want to be in a abusive relationship with food but we have to talk about ptsd oh because i want to talk about some of these

psychiatric because that's why people come to see us either they're struggling or they love someone who's struggling so talk to us about ptsd and food because so many people are traumatized today. Absolutely. It's becoming so much a part of what's going on. And I have to say it's probably some of the stuff that we're experiencing during this current stage of life or phase of the universe, I should say, that for different reasons, people are just either some of my patients, even at the beginning, were traumatized by watching all the COVID statistics across the screen. And you know, turns out that there are certain foods we can embrace. And that's how we try to frame the list. And I should also say that these, these sheets at little tables we have at the end of each chapter,

there's some overlap, because understanding that someone may pick up the book because they have PTSD, someone else may pick it up for depression, someone else may have both. So there is some overlap of the foods, but we also looked at the specific foods for a specific diagnosis. And it turns out that even half a cup of blueberries a day can help individuals who've had PTSD and help them through it. So including that in breakfast or as a healthy snack would be great. We come back to the omega-3s. You know, they're good in so many different disorders that my attitude about that is if you can eat foods that have omega-3s, why not?

You know, it's not going to harm you. It's only going to be good for you. And it also helps in terms of trauma. It also turns out that vitamin E helps out again, we come back to the turmeric. And then the other food we found was that ginkgo, ginkgo biloba had had had some, had some, you know, some positive effects. I do try to stick more with foods though. So I tend to, you know, give people more of a list that moves toward what foods can you use and what foods can you eat. And then I also ask them to be aware of things like sources of glutamates, because those actually are one of the foods you want to avoid. So if you're going to a Chinese restaurant, a simple thing,

like just ask for MSG-free food or make choices or go to restaurants that you know don't have those types of things in them. I actually have scans on and off MSG. And MSG for vulnerable people disrupts their brain. And so does red dye number 40. Yes. And so trying to eat whole food, clean food is critical. What about for ADHD?

So if I could just go back to the point about the red dye, you're absolutely right. Because the other foods that go along with avoiding glutamates and, you know, the MSG type foods are actually all the processed foods. Those are things, you know, we sort of know that we should stay away from the high sugared foods and things like that. And then, you know, the interesting thing with ADHD is that some of the studies didn't necessarily show that sugar was the worst offender. But, you know, we always want to be a little bit careful about that. Things that did help, we have actually a recipe for a smoothie. And what we did is a study that had shown improvement in symptoms of ADHD.

What they had done in this is created a bar, a breakfast bar for the study. And because this breakfast bar, and usually some of those breakfast bars that we buy commercially could be highly sugared or have different things in them. What we did is we took that study and the information from the breakfast bar and we turned it into a smoothie in the book. So one of the things we suggest is that, you know, firstly, breakfast is a really important meal, especially for individuals with ADHD. And we suggest that they eat something. So we created the smoothie for that reason. Then we give them guidelines around things like caffeine, you know, staying to a low amount. If you do drink coffee, even certain teas, stick to moderate amounts. Stick to the lower end of the amounts because they can make your symptoms feel worse.

And embrace foods like berries, cherries, eggplant, onions, kale, green tea, all of that because of the polyphenols that are so good for the symptoms. And foods that have vitamin C and vitamin B's in them. And then, you know, the good minerals that we know help us such as zinc, magnesium, potassium. And those are some of the things that you, you know, that you really want to embrace in order to help your symptoms along. So if you have ADHD, and I just, so I looked up the chocolate protein. Yes. One cup of unsweetened almond milk, a tablespoon of walnuts, a scoop of vanilla whey protein.

We actually make vegetarian. I don't do well with whey. Some people don't. That's right. It's an easy substitution. We have a vanilla protein powder that's so clean. But whey protein, a tablespoon of flax seeds. Love it.

A teaspoon of organic instant coffee powder. That's interesting. Teaspoon of natural cocoa powder, coconut flakes, honey, and a quarter ripe avocado. Think of the nutrients in that. So one thing I thought actually sounds healthier.

One thing I would do when I could really, really go to the gym, I just didn't have time to make breakfast, but I knew I needed the energy. So I make a quarter cup of coffee. So I would make a quarter cup of coffee. I would throw a scoop of protein powder in there, a little bit of MCT oil, but the avocado is healthier.

So I would just do it, but that would be my breakfast. It was on the go, and it's would be my breakfast. Exactly. And it's like it's on the go. And it's like quick and it was good. And some of it, you know, we again, we were trying to emulate this bar that was tested in the study. But also, we just threw in a couple of extra ingredients that we thought would be an extra boost. And you can, and the whole idea with the instant coffee, the espresso powder or the little bit of coffee was because you want a little bit of caffeine to get your day going. But it's a way to contain that. So if you've put it in your

smoothie, then we're suggesting, you know, don't have three cups the rest of the day, right? It's and stuff like that. And I actually, I think I really liked the fact that you brought that up about the protein powder, because, you know, we were trying to create recipes that that people could feel they could get the ingredients. But I think that there's so many options. Yeah, you know, we were trying to create recipes that people could feel they could get the ingredients. But I think that there's so many options. You know, with all the recipes, I feel they're easy replacements. If you're plant based, you know, you can have a cauliflower steak instead of our salmon recipe or our chicken recipe. There's just an easy way to do that. And the same thing, if you don't have dairy, you should just substitute it with the equal amount of the protein powder that is a clean source for you.

All right. When we come back. I'm so excited. I feel like I could just keep going. I told you you were going to be happy. There's so many things I want to say. We have one more episode with Dr. Uma Naidoo, psychiatrist, chef, nutritionist, really leader in food is medicine for your mind.

You can pre-order her book now, UmaNaidooMD.com. It's also going to be everywhere. Great books are sold August 4th. Take a picture of it. Post it on any of your social media sites. Also, you can go to BrainWarriorsWayPodcast.com. Leave us a comment, question, or review.

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